You can now join Facebook groups as your business (admins permitting)

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This latest development in the ever changing platform which is Facebook is greatly received whilst to others it may not bring such joy.

As a marketer who regularly posts into Facebook groups on behalf of my small business clients the new ability to join those groups as their business page rather than their personal profile means less account switching and a clearer division between work Facebook and personal Facebook.

Whether you choose to join groups as yourself or your business I have outlined the 3 key advantages and disadvantages from a marketing and personal perspective

Advantages

1) Clearer division between the content you see on Facebook as a personal profile. 

2) Your business posts into these groups are now linked back to your business page so any enquiries will be directed to your business page not to you.

3) If you outsource your group interactions there is no longer the need for your social media manager to use your personal Facebook account, Once they have full admin access to your business page they can join groups and post as your business from their own profile.


Disadvantages

2) It is entirely up to the admins of each group to decide if they wish to allow businesses to join the group. For some groups which exist purely for the purpose of business self promotion this now makes perfect sense, however, for groups which are based on gossip or local chat it is harder to control the integrity of the group.

3) As above some groups may not accept businesses joining so you are now in danger of having both a mix of business joins and personal joins so you will need be fastidious in ensuring you keep a record of which groups you have joined and whether you are a personal or business member.

So should you switch?

In summary would I recommend joining groups as your business? Yes, I would. The ability to be able to join groups which exist for business promotion, business knowledge sharing and networking it makes perfect sense to join these groups as your business so that all traffic is directed to your business page not your message requests.

For local groups that exist for gossip remember if you joined that group because you wanted to know what was going on locally then stay in that group as your personal profile, if you are regularly engaging in group discussions and have built up an integrity in that group then any posts you put into that group to promote your business will be recognised as being from you the member. If you only joined in the first place for the purpose of advertising on certain permitted days then switch over to a business membership.(admin allowing)

One thing is for certain this new change to the Facebook landscape will surely bring more business content however, it may equally enable small business owners to reclaim their feed and separate their business life from their social profile and as small business owner myself this can only be good.

Thanks for reading and happy Facebooking!